Craig did not stop but leaped upstairs
and then down again into a little back court by means of a fire-
escape. Through a sort of short alley we groped our way, or rather
through an intricate maze of alleys and a labyrinth of blind
recesses. We were apparently back of a store on Pell Street.
It was the work of only a moment to go through another door and
into another room, filled with smoky, dirty, unpleasant, fetid
air. This room, too, seemed to be piled with tea chests. Craig
opened one. There lay piles and piles of opium tins, a veritable
fortune in the drug.
Mysterious pots and pans, strainers, wooden vessels, and testing
instruments were about. The odour of opium in the manufacture was
unmistakable, for smoking opium is different from the medicinal
drug. There it appeared the supplies of thousands of smokers all
over the country were stored and prepared. In a corner a mass of
the finished product lay weltering in a basin like treacle. In
another corner was the apparatus for remaking yen-shee or once-
smoked opium.
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